Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai has directed the MOIT to soon complete and submit to the Government the mechanism issuing regulations to support, facilitate and encourage wind power projects in Vietnam.

At the meeting on the morning of Feb 28th, the MOIT said that the application of wind power in Vietnam is still in the original form, with the total installed capacity of about 9 MW, of which 7.5 MW has been connected to the grid but not been priced. The small family-scale turbines (150-200 W) are mainly installed in off-grid areas.

Wind power investment in Vietnam is still underdeveloped due to many difficulties from natural conditions, weather, technology, and especially high costs and electricity prices due to high investment rates. Wind power investment rates in the world as well as in Vietnam are still quite high and greatly vary. The highest rate is USD 2.77 million per MW, the lowest is USD 1.77 million per MW and the average is USD 2.2 million per MW.

There are currently 21 grid-scale wind power projects which are being researched and developed, the most popular type has the capacity of 30MW with 1.5 MW turbines. These projects are concentrated in Binh Thuan, Ninh Thuan, Binh Dinh and Lam Dong – provinces which has the potential of wind power with the design capacity of approximately 2,000 MW.

However, the licensing and implementation is still spontaneous, due to lack of specific plans as well as the addition of the general power planning of localities and areas.

Against this backdrop, Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai has required the new mechanism to clarify specific incentives to help investors calculate and implement highly feasible wind power projects in Vietnam, make policies to support the purchase prices of electricity, taxes, land ... and especially the creation of funds to support renewable energy and environmental protection - one of the most important sources of revenue to support renewable energy products like grid-connected wind power.

In particular, the mechanism will create a legal framework on the mechanisms and policies supporting the investment in wind power in particular as well as other renewable energy projects in general, providing the basis for localities and regions to build plans for new energy sources which are synchronous in the overall electricity planning.

By Minh Duc